Aviathor wrote:
He does, the problem being that I way prefer to have an automated online flight planning tool providing me autonomy, for which I only very occasionally need support, rather than something like Olivia where I depend on a grumpy human to get my flight plan through 100% of the time.
I agree — so do I. But the effect can be that when you very occasionally need the grumpy human, he won’t be around.
FIS is an ICAO obligation. So you should always get a service of some sort. The “extras” are IMHO there just because the system was set up to support those jobs. Like e.g. DFS (?) hand-re-entering electronically filed flight plans.
The tossing out of flightplans happens mostly int he UK even for IFR flightplans at lower altitude. Not so in the rest of Europe (most of it). And if the addressing is done OK, the flightplan is known to enroute units. In some cases, e.g. when flying over water/sea at night, the flightplan is also delivered to SAR units. It definitely services a purpose, but it is not a very robust system in that it validates.
Peter wrote:
Well, the more basic point is that you don’t need a “service” nowadays, for most stuff. The need for a service is mostly artificial. You have a GPS, you can fly A to B.
But I may or may not be able to see other traffic, may have missed notams about airspace restrictions, may want to know earlier along my route if I will get through a controlled / military airspace or may simply want to be sure that if I have to declare an emergency, it will actually be heard. I believe that these are all very valid point to get radar service.
Airborne_Again wrote:
It’s not true in Sweden. As long as you have given a specific altitude in a VFR flight plan (and not just “VFR”), the flight plan is distributed to all ATC and FIS units affected by the flight. The flight plan should be addressed to the single address aaaaZPZX, where “aaaa” is the location indicator of the departure airport, the flight plan system then distributes it automatically.
Great that there are sensible countries. This is how it should work all over in Europe IMO.
But I may or may not be able to see other traffic, may have missed notams about airspace restrictions, may want to know earlier along my route if I will get through a controlled / military airspace or may simply want to be sure that if I have to declare an emergency, it will actually be heard. I believe that these are all very valid point to get radar service.
I agree, and of course everybody would like a better service.
It’s just that we are increasingly facing an army of bean counters who are closing down services all over the place, or trying to. And I think if one is to be realistic, one needs to decide which are the biggest fish to fry.
I would list them as follows, with the most important at the top
I think emotionally most people would put the last one first, but when you have flown around with a TCAS system which shows more or less all Mode A/C/S traffic, you realise that the vast majority of the traffic is not spotted even when you know where to look. You also discover that a lot of traffic is not reported by a radar service (there is no obligation on them to tell you; they can be on a phone call, etc).
The last-1 is also controversial, but nowadays getting notams and navigating is really easy. It is virtually impossible to do any serious flying without having mobile internet. I know many pilots who go without that but all of them fly only very locally.
This is how it should work all over in Europe IMO.
You can have it if you can get taxpayer funding 
As someone pointed out, GA asking for stuff is a bit like the Royal Yacht Club asking for stuff. It isn’t going to happen, and the services we do get currently will probably disappear in due course.
What is really bad is airports closing, but that’s another thread….
Peter wrote:
Does Olivia offer a database like e.g. EuroFPL? I have never used Olivia, because it isn’t supposed to work unless at least one end of the flight is in France.
Yes, it does. Armed with the “OLIVIA reference” (id / number), you can read / amend / delay / cancel the flight plan. Who has access to it is another issue altogether. I think that is “everybody except those that need it for their job and pilots on the OLIVIA website”. The BRIA offices definitely only see those (departing?) from their FIR, and they can not find a FP by OLIVIA reference.
They even have a database of airplanes they know, and if they think your plane is painted red, that’s what ends up in the “accepted” flight plan, even if you filed it as blue. Being the perfectionist that I am, I would phone them to have it corrected. The correction would show up in Olivia, so they definitely have some way to communicate changes to it.
There is this one airport near Luxembourg that OLIVIA doesn’t (or didn’t) know; it is only the one of the main (non-controlled) GA platforms in the regions, with IFR approaches (in class G) and everything, you see. Or it was classified in the wrong FIR in the OLIVIA database. So it sent FPs to the Bourget BRIA, who just ignored it because “not my FIR”. OLIVIA helpfully gave their phone number as contact point, but when called they would blow you off, sometimes more rudely than others. The first time they asked me “where is that airfield”. I gave bearing and distance from the regional international airport, didn’t sound familiar to them. When given the name of the “département”, “not my FIR”. That’s the only occasions on which I had less than courteous and totally helpful treatment from French services. When calling the (at the time) Bâle BRIA (in charge of that FIR), they didn’t have the flight plan (OLIVIA sent it to le Bourget, not them…) so ended up having to phone in the whole flight plan, which they graciously accepted and processed.
There was a period when the connection between the French VFR FP system and the rest of the world was basically broken; there was a NOTAM that any FP (or was it VFR FP) departing from or arriving to a French aerodrome must be done on Olivia. I had such fun things as (flights between Luxembourg and France):
